source: Agence France Presse, via BBC week in pictures
Kissing in public is taboo throughout Indonesia, especially so in Muslim dominated Java and Lombok islands; hindu-majority Bali island, however, does offer young people (of different sex) one chance a year to demonstrate their love in public. “Kissing festival”, locally known as Med-Medan, is held one day after Nyepi. Onlookers cheer on as they sprinkle the Balinese lovers with water.
— I saw a weird looking sign, my husband tells me, on a Chinese restaurant. It had a large “七” – Chinese for 7 – with, underneath, the mention “Sept”.
— Yeah, “sept” is French for “seven”.
— What! (He reacts as if I’ve just proffered the most absurd of facts.) But isn’t sept the abbreviation of septembre? I was sure it was nine!
— Ohhh, yes well we do abbreviate the ninth month sept., but underneath a big Chinese 7, I take it to mean 7. Septembre and sept are quite unrelated, really. (I lie with conviction.)
— Really? I don’t know. September, October, November, and December; they sound like Latin numbers to me.
— Oooooh! You’re so right! The last months of the year are numbered from seven to ten! I hadn’t noticed!
Once again the immigrant teaches the native about her own land. «Teaches» is a euphemism! I’m blinded with this shiny truth!
… And, I can’t explain why.
So I checked. The story begins with the Romans being a military people: their calendar starts when war is launched, and that’s in March. (They fight in sandals, the Romans, so they prefer to wait for the snow to melt before campaigning.) The names of the first four months of the Roman calendar honor gods: in March we make war (Mars), in April we make love (Aphrodite), in May we sow our fields (Maïus), in June we marry (Junon). The following months are called #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, et #10.
So what happens after December? Nothing. The calendar finishes. There’s about fifty days left until the beginning of the next year in March, which don’t count! This time in-between has no name and days are no longer counted, except for the few days before the start of the new year, which are called calends.
Under Julius Ceasar, two extra winter months are added: one named after Janus, the god of doors, and the other named after Februa, the god of death. The sunny month of Quintilis is also renamed in Ceasar’s honor, Julius. Later Augustus Ceasar got Sextilis to be renamed after himself, and not only that, but since he deserved as many days in his month as Julius, a day was removed from the end of the calendar year in February and appended to August.
So far, September is still month number seven. It’s only with the official adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 (this calendar removes 3 leap days per 4 centuries, for better precision) that European citizens are all encouraged to shift their celebrations of the pagan new year, around the spring equinox in March, to the fiscal and political new year day of January 1st. Thus, the 2 month shift in the Latin numbering of the months.
To make fun of the few ignorant poor souls naïve enough to keep thinking New Year’s is at the spring equinox and wondering why they haven’t been invited to any parties this year, people started to create empty gift packages and fake invitations to non-existent parties, for the April Fools.
The jacks are:
The queens:
And the kings:
Oliver Sacks says so (at 13:50): “There is another part of the brain, which is especially activated when one sees cartoons. It’s activated when one recognizes cartoons, when one draws cartoons, and when one hallucinates them. It’s very interesting that that should be specific.”
While reading some olympic news spiced up with useless knowledge à la Jean Dion, I found this rather incredible fact:
[...] the American Johnny Spillane, in nordic combined —cross-country ski plus ski jump — has a damn holy fear of… travel by airplane. «I hate it», said he, «I just sit there and suffer. From the time the wheels come up to the time they go down, I’m not having any fun. » And nevertheless, he likes flying with no aircraft.
The fear of flying also has the names erophobia, aviatophobia, aviophobia ou pteromechanophobia. Here is a list of words ending in phobia. I haven’t found one that stands for fear of overly pretentious pseudo-scientific words ending in phobia, but I like Aibohphobia – fear of palindromes.
Aside from Johnny Spillane, the amazing «Non-Flying Dutchman», Dennis Bergcamp, is known for his fear of flying. The football player, who’s caliber would be high enough to scare an acrophobic, suffered from aviopoibia to the point he refused to take part in any match he couldn’t get to without flying. European distances being somewhat more reasonable than, say, a Montreal-Vancouver drive, he could represent Holland at the 1994 and 1998 World Cups. However, he had to desert his team, otherwise known as «The Flying Dutchmen», for the 2002 Mundial, held in Japan and Korea. He could have hitched a ship ride with fellow countryman and captain of the Flying Dutchman, Barend Fokke, had the latter not vanished mysteriously towards the end of the 17th century…
Legend has it Captain Barend Fokke and his crew were banned to err in between worlds indefinitely for a pact they had made with the demon. In effect, the men and their ship could sail between Holland and Java in only three month and four days, which clearly hints at something fishy going on.
Moreover, Fokke was, apparently, extremely ugly, which added to the credibility of an infernal pact[2].
The Dutch vessel then vanished without a trace, and many phantom ship apparitions, from South Africa to the North Sea, were subsequently attributed to Fokke, the probable captain of the Flying Dutchman. Later though, Flying Dutchman viewership crashed low as martian spacecraft sightings increased…
We know today that phantom ships exist. They are an optical illusion caused by the refraction of light near the horizon in atypical temperature conditions. The phenomenon is called Fata Morgana, and causes objects which are behind the horizon line to appear to float slightly above the horizon, deformed. Fata Morgana is the name given to Morgan le Fay of the arthurian legend in the Italian translation, but I digress…
Flying Dutchman par George Grie
image shamelessly stolen from the BBC
Walter Fredrick “Fred” Morrison: inventor of the Frisbee, died on Feb. 9th at age 90. Frisbees were initially baptised Whirlo-Way, then Flyin-Saucer, and Pluto Platter, before becoming Frisbees. Let us lift a cake pan in his honor; Cheers, mister Morrisson!
